Lloyd Bill
The Lloyd Bill was an act passed by the Southern Confederation Council in May 1840 ending the practice of Negro slavery in the Southern Confederation. It was named after its sponsor, Governor Willie Lloyd of South Carolina. The Lloyd Bill was a response to the increasingly problematic nature of slavery in the S.C. Ever since the 17th century, the colonies of the S.C. had become ever more reliant on slavery as a labor force for planting and harvesting cash crops such as tobacco and cotton. The cotton boom of the early 19th century had accelerated the trend, but it had also increased the number and severity of slave uprisings. The government of the S.C. spent increasing sums on an army and navy to control its slave population, and the S.C. itself grew to resemble a vast armed camp designed to control its slaves. Southerners were willing to endure these burdens as long as cotton remained a profitable commodity. However, when the Panic of 1836 struck, the price of cotton fell, and with it the price of slaves. A prime field hand who was worth N.A. £150 in the spring of 1835 had fallen in value to N.A. £30 by October 1837. By February 1838, the price of slaves had fallen below the cost of transporting them from Africa, and the slave trade collapsed the following year. In August 1838, Lloyd responded to John Calhoun's defense of slavery by claiming that civilization in the S.C. would not be threatened by manumission, and proposing that all the confederation's slaves be freed over a period of ten years, with the government compensating the owners. The following year, British Prime Minister Sir Duncan Amory called for the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire, promising financial and administrative aid in manumission programs. Citing Amory's pledge, Lloyd in the spring of 1840 proposed the payment of N.A. £35 per slave to any and all slaveholders who would accept the price, with the money to be raised through the sale of "manumission bonds" in Britain and the Confederation of North America. The offer would end on 1 January 1842, at which time all remaining slaves would be freed at a rate of N.A. £32. Since the price of slaves in the S.C. had declined to N.A. £19 two years before, manumission would be a way for cash-starved plantation owners to recoup their fortunes. The Lloyd bill also arranged for the education and training of the former slaves, while a provision inserted into the bill by James Philipson required that former slaves be bound to their plantations until their period of education was over. The Philipson provision would later be used to keep the former slaves and their descendants bound to the soil for another two generations. After bitter wrangling in the S.C. Council in Norfolk, the Lloyd Bill was passed, and sent to Viceroy Sir Alexander Haven in Burgoyne for ratification, which he gave on 16 May. There was talk in the S.C. of revolution in the week before ratification, but in the event there were few disturbances. Although Sobel does not say so, it is likely that the muted response was due to many slavery supporters choosing to move to Jefferson with their slaves rather than see them freed. It is possible that Calhoun himself did so, since a former slave named Miguel Calhoun was a leader of the Rainbow War in 20th century Mexico. Within six months of the Lloyd Bill's passage, half of the slave owners in the S.C. had accepted the manumission program, and before the deadline almost every slave in the S.C. had been freed. However, few of the freed slaves were permitted to leave the plantations. John Harnett wrote in 1935 that "Southern Confederation slaves exchanged one form of slavery for another" while the planters "now found themselves with more money than they had had since 1835, less responsibility, and for the first time in a century, without the fear of slave revolts. One might easily say that the Lloyd bill did not grant freedom to the slaves, but rather to their masters." ---- Sobel's sources for the Lloyd Bill are Roscoe Symes' The End of the Slave Trade (Norfolk, 1904); Harnett's A History of Slavery in the Southern Confederation (London, 1935); John Pritchard's William Lloyd: The Southern Emancipator (New York, 1956); and H.C. Hartwick's Black Skin and Red Ink: Profits in the Slave Trade, 1820-1840 (New York, 1967). Category:Legislation of the Southern Confederation